Engineering the software development process in robotics is one of the basic necessities towards industrial-strength service robotics systems. A major challenge is to make the step from code-driven designs towards model-driven systems. The foundation for a model-driven software development approach (MDSD) in robotics shall be laid by a domain specific language that is defined as a UML profile and that is implemented in a MDSD tool chain.

A strict component based approach separates middleware aspects from algorithmic solutions and is thus essential towards reuse and composability of software building blocks. A special focus is put on service-oriented architectures for service robotics on top of QoS-middleware.